Friday
Oct312008
Neal Stephenson in Toronto, Halloween candy survey
Friday, October 31, 2008 at 7:48AM 
I had no idea that Neal Stephenson writes out his books by hand using a fountain pen. I think my hand would fall off after just a few paragraphs. Anyway, I have a post about the event up on Inkygirl, for those interested.
I'm excited about tonight. It's the first time I'll be handing out candy at Halloween at my own house since I moved to Toronto over 20 years ago. I've put up some Halloween decorations, and I'm stressing out about running out of Halloween candy before the end of the night. Sure, my neighbors said we don't tend to get many trick-or-treaters because of our location, but what if there's a sudden surge of trick-or-treaters this year?
What if some little toddler dressed up in an oversized Winnie the Pooh costume ends up on my doorstep after I've handed out the last chocolate bar?!? I've been looking over my Halloween stash and doing calculations in my head, trying to figure out how many chocolate bars I should hand out to each child to minimize the chances that I'll be left with a pile of candy at the end of the night but also avoid running out too early.
And that brings me to my Halloween survey. What are you planning to hand out tonight? How much candy do you give to each child? Or are you planning to turn off the lights and just pretend you're not home? Will you be at a Halloween party instead? Or just ignoring the event altogether?
I'll resume my OVFF report soon.
tagged Books/movies/TV, halloween
Books/movies/TV, halloween
Reader Comments (15)
In my neighborhood, we had "Beggar's Night" last night. I presume this was done to accommodate the Friday night high school football games. No one came to my door, but in case someone did, I had Reese's peanut butter cups for them. I was out the first hour trick-or-treating with my daughter, and she came home with lots of goodies.
Running out of candy isn't a big problem.
1. The cute little kids come early. By the end of the evening, all you'll see is the surly teenagers. If you rund out then, they can handle a little disappointment. Besides chocolate is bad for their acne.
2. Leftover candy is bad, because you'll be tempted to eat it. So buy fruit. If you run out of chocolate, offer the kids apples and oranges. It's healthier for them, and doesn't feed the fat-cat overpriced Halloween candy merchants.
I'm not sure how big Halloween is here in England. Judging by the number of costumes and candy (sweets in the UK, lollies in Australia) for sale in the local supermarket I'd say it's reasonably popular. It wasn't very big in Australia but was getting more popular as Australia becomes more "Americanised."
I haven't purchased a Halloween stash yet. I'm thinking about printing out the http://www.devon-cornwall.police.uk/v3/crime/tricktreat/index.htm" rel="nofollow">sign that the local police have put together for people who don't wish to take part. Would that make me a Halloween Scrooge?
I wouldn't stress too much about running out of candy. When you do just turn off the lights and ignore the plaintive knocking. :-)
The question I'm pondering is should I buy nice stuff that I'll enjoy eating if there's any left over or should I just buy the cheap and nasty stuff and hope I get rid of it all. Crikey! I guess I really am a Halloween Scrooge!
Pondside and I plan to hide in the basement and watch Buffy (perhaps the Halloween episodes?) We'll be going to a Halloween housefilk on Saturday, where I'll mark the occasion by sing "Jack Frost".
I just hope our pumpkin lasts out the day. Reid bought the next-to-last at a nearby store, but it had started rotting. Now, it's well, um, pretty rotten on one side. Reid carved the non-rotten side last night, and it's currently in the garage where it will be cool. Hopefully, it won't disintegrate by this evening. :D
As for candy, I usually have too much because I don't want to run out either. Every year I count how many kids come, but I never write it down and forget it year over year.
I bought the candy weeks ago and hid it so that Reid and Ronnie wouldn't eat it all. Now I can take it out, since they're not home. I couldn't resist, and also bought "gummy" body parts and eyes. They taste awful, but they look so darn cool. Especially the eyes. I'll give a yummy candy plus an icky body part to each child tonight.
I bought 3 bags of chocolate bars because that's what they were doing the special on at the supermarket. I don't expect to run out but it will be OK if I do - I'll just blow the pumpkins out.
I have 3 pumpkins and Alex and I have done ours - a whitch on a broomstick (me) and a scary face (him). Amy wants a dog, so that's my next up once I pick her up from daycare. Hallowe'en is growing in the UK, as reasonable speed. I enjoy it now it's mainstream enough to be the done thing - I used to resist the odd people coming around because I didn't think it would catch on properly, but am happy to have been proved wrong.
I have about two large bags worth of candies, all chocolate with the exception of a few lollipops because I have learned the kids will not be pleased to get anything but chocolate, usually. We generally give two of the minis to the younger kids and one or two (depending on guilt and current candy level, as well as traffic level) to the teens. (Yes, by body weight that's backwards, but....)
Generally we have quite a bit left at the end of the night, and since it is supposed to rain here (maybe) tonight that may add to it. But some years we have almost run out. You can switch down from two minis to one when you near running out.
When you tire of handing out candy or you run out, turn off any automated decorations, blow out any candles, and turn your porch light off. You don't even have to ignore the knocks/rings in our neighborhood - if there's no light, the person's assumed to not be in or not be handing out candy, and no one will waste their time walking up from the sidewalk to the door to ask.
I live in an apartment building where the median age is about 71, so I'm not expecting anyone to come by tonight. Fortunately, though, one of my friends is hosting a rock band party, so that should be good fun.
Last year when I lived in a townhouse, we ran out of candy within an hour and a half. I think a lot of kids travel to my old neighbourhood because of the high-density housing, more-candy-for-less-walking potential.
I'm giving out bouncing glow-in-the-dark eyeballs, my usual tradition. I may be going to some other toy next year because OTC has apparently gone to a new manufacturer and the quality of the eyeballs isn't quite up to its old standard. Anyway, I ordered 7 or 8 dozen, which should have me covered. When/if I run out I just turn the lights out, and if I have leftovers, well there's no danger of me eating them.
My neighborhood seems woefully underdecorated this year. We'll probably have the same number of trick-or-treaters, but I don't know if their haul will be as big as they'd like, if no decorations = no candy.
I live in a condo complex that typically gets at least 20 kids, but the number varies, and I always forget to save the number so I'm ready next year.
The complex gives us orange pieces of paper with jack-o-lantern faces copied onto them--the porch light covers here are almost exactly 8.5 x 11, so you just tape up the paper and it says you're open for business. I got three bags of small candy bars, and if I run out before the end of the night, the paper comes down. As someone pointed out, it's probably the older kids who are stretching the tradition that lose out, and, well, that's life.
I actually see handing out candy on Halloween as a sort of civic duty, like voting or giving blood. I got it when I was a kid, and I should pay forward.
Deb - I just saw your survey. My office is working with Nestle confectionery (Kit Kat, Aero, Smarties and Coffee Crisp) -- and we actually surveyed Canadians about Halloween. Thought you'd be interested!
- Nearly four in ten Canadian adults celebrate Halloween at work and nearly half will attend a Halloween party.
- Four in ten adults will wear a costume on October 31st and 80 per cent will hand out treats at their door.
- Close to half of parents admit to trying to sneak treats from their kids’ loot bags.
- Dad is better at swiping treats than Mom - 74% of fathers claim they rarely or never get caught in the act. 70% of mothers get away with their sweet crime.
- Traditions die hard. Nearly half of the parents surveyed claimed they frequently caught their own parents or siblings sneaking their Halloween treats when they were children.
Fun eh?
Well, I caved in and bought some chocolate bars and some sour gummy things. We had 10 kids come by in three groups. Still plenty of leftovers. The kids were too polite and only wanted to take one thing. We had to force them to take more!
There's not a lot of kids on the street I live on. We got two kids the first year we were here, and none last year. We have a bag of Reese's Pieces just in case, but I'm not expecting any of them to actually leave the house.
The place we were in before, we had about two hours of kids streaming on and off the proch - 'twas a fun night.
We had about 30 kids come by last nite. Some of them were very cute. We gave out Mini chocolates (smarties, coffee crisp, kitkat, aero). One each and they seem to be happy with that. You don't want to overdo it these days since we are suppose to consume less in order to save our Earth. We always buy treats that we would enjoy ourselves because it would be an awful waste to end up throwing away stuff we wouldn't eat. It looks like we are stuck with 70 mini bars which will last us for a few weeks, to be eaten up at a leisurely pace between the 4 of us. I had expected more kids since the weather was so nice, but we are one of the few homes on our street which participate and I suppose not having a Jack-O-Lantern this year did not attract as many treat or treaters. We will try to do better next year, decoration-wise.
[...] saw Mark, I thought he looked very familiar and then realized where I had seen him before — interviewing Neal Stephenson in Toronto last month! Fascinating guy; I enjoyed talking with [...]